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> The F35 lost radio communication after crossing the international date line the wrong direction IIRC, and the pilots had to use hand signals to land.

From what I remember, the first time 4 USAF F22 were flying across international date line to deploy to Hawaii(?), they had software related issues. As they flew across the international date line (first time in a real flight), all computers on the jets crashed, including navigation/etc.

Luckily they were flying in close formation with a tanker, signaled with flashlights, and were able to follow the tanker back to another base safely.

I believe USAF requires a multi jet (usually tanker) to accompany small jets when they are flying across the ocean.

When Toyota US HQ moved from CA to Plano, Texas, there were rumors that part of the reason was to purge out employees with low/no energy, initiative, output, etc. Employee with no output at work will most likely not bother with the whole enchilada involved in relocating to another state.

Apparently the US HQs of Japanese motor companies follow Japanese corporate model and do not lay off employees. So they end up with quite a bit of low performing employees. Just rumors I heard.

> That in turn was followed by a small exodus of many of the better engineers (since that's who is able to leave easily when things go south.)

That is such an obvious outcome. When it seems layoff/low-morale seems to be coming, people who will leave for new jobs on their own are usually ones with the initiative, right skillset, youth, good with people, etc, which is why they can get a new job with ease. And these are the very people a company wants to hold on to. So the other option to achieve attrition rate is to have lay offs. But of course that is not good for reputation of the company.

> Five years later that company is now two CIOs removed from the original attrition warrior who left presumably to help the attrition rate even.

I have a suspicion the CIO was specifically brought in by higher ups to force higher attrition rate.

Wifes Samsung S9 from Verizon has no Facebook app.

I've heard only item not tossed/thrown around at FedEx/UPS/etc is any box labeled as hazardous material.

Every other boxes are treated equally, tossed/thrown.

I agree eGPU is a game changer , at least for me. Having the ability to use eGPU in my next laptop is now a requirement for me.

>>> four jobs in four years

That does look not so good to me tbh. 2 jobs in 2 years would look ok to me. But I guess it depends.

>>> they feel a mysterious attraction and then promote the guy for a reason they can't really explain but can come up with a justification for.

For a domain (tech industry) that is supposedly dominated by facts and numbers, there is a lot of promotion and hiring based on such mysterious feelings, not based on actual facts and numbers. Culture fit?

If you like what I said, please click on subscribe, I mean, upvote my comment.

/sarcasm

The irony and tragedy of modern capitalism.

Everyone wants to get paid, but no one wants to pay.

Since ones in power have more control, the top end up keep getting paid more, while the lower ends keep getting paid less.

One example would be equity firms.

They buy a firm with borrowed money, and in order to pay back the loan, interest on the loan, AND make a profit, they apply the expensive knowledge learned from fancy MBA schools (that charge bucks) and lower cost and increase profit. And lowering cost always means paying less to employees. And increasing profit means charging more.

Little do the super rich realize, that soon enough there will be no middle class to buy their stuff/services. And eventually the rich/superrich can only sell stuff to each other, while us peasants watch on smartphones from our slums using youtube service and enduring all the ads since we can't afford the $20/month to hide the ads...

Umm, the Navy has do what they are told, even if they feel they don't have enough people/equipment.

Also, which countries is US actively blockading illegally?

> Since 2015, the Fitz had lacked a quartermaster chief petty officer, a crucial leader who helps safely navigate a warship and trains its sailors — a shortcoming known to both the destroyer’s squadron and Navy officials in the United States, Fort wrote.

The accident took place on June 17, 2017. So for 2 - 3 years, they couldn't find a chief petty officer to accept the assignment?

I wonder, were potential chief petty officers avoiding the ship knowing it was a bad assignment, with crew that had low morale and not enough training?

From my readings of US Navy of WW2 and personal experience in modern day tech companies, I think it's not just the bureaucracy that's at fault. Rather, the organization (actually any organization) by default favors those who manage their superiors well for more/faster promotions. So a lot of times, the best of the best doesn't necessarily rise to the top, but rather those who are good at self promoting.

1. IN WW2, US Navy admirals learned painful lessons to trust captains who manage subordinates well, not the superiors.

When US was suddenly pulled into WW2, the submarines of US navy in WW2 did not achieve much at beginning. For months, US navy submarines failed to sink enemy ships. One big factor was faulty torpedoes. US navy had recently finished developing a new type of torpedo with a magnetic detonator. It was supposed to be a very effective weapon. But due to budget restrictions before WW2 (in the Great Depression), not enough testing was done. If I recall correctly, after spending the precious budget to develop a new type of weapon, not one complete torpedo with live warhead was actually fired in a realistic manner. But I digress.

The real reason US submarines did not achieve much initially at beginning of WW2 in the Pacific theater was the captains on the submarines. A captain in a WW2 submarine disproportionately influences how well or badly the submarine's crew performed. The captain's aggressiveness, skill, carelessness, excessive cautiousness, and etc all directly determined what the crew in the submarine achieved. When the US submarines in Pacific theater finally began to sink Japanese ships at a satisfactory level, it was discovered not a single (or very few) US Navy captain who had reached the rank before the war was still in command of a US submarine. They had failed to achieve results, and were replaced with proven captains who knew how to actually manage the crew below him on the submarine, not manage the higher officers in officers' club.

Basically, before WW2, a US navy officer who was competent enough, projected image fit for a captain, AND managed his superiors well got the promotion. Well ok, previous statement is my own assumption. But the fact is when a shooting war began, it was discovered the officers who got command of a submarine prior to the beginning of WW2 couldn't find the enemy or shoot straight when it really mattered.

US navy finally began promoting officers who knew how to manage the crew below him well and had a killer instinct, not the ones with superior social skills. US navy brass learned that the enemy did not care how good a US Navy officer was at self marketing/promoting.

2. My own managers who moved onto bigger firms.

I've been in US tech scene (IT), about 15 years. Of the managers I had during that time, 2 managers (at separate firm/time) who were above me went on to work at globally well known tech/entertainment firms in tech VP roles. I mean really well known firms. Not Google or Facebook but older, established firms. Top of the heap. Because I worked in small companies with these managers, I got to observe them in close proximity.

What I remember the most of them 2 is how incessantly they visited/chatted/hung-out with the CEO. Sure a lot of it was work I'm sure, but I also know it was a lot of befriending, kissing up, using one's social skill. I as a staff member was given slices of their time, but nothing like the attention given to the CEO.

And sure enough, both firms were closed down. Of course a LOT of it was beyond their control. But it also shows they as managers couldn't find the right project to tackle or manage their subordinates effectively so the company could make $ to survive. Well, maybe or maybe not.

But I do know they spent a lot of time and energy befriending the higher-ups above them. And, I trust the hard lessons US Navy admirals in WW2 learned, that were paid for with lives. The lesson that you should avoid those who spend much energy at self promoting, as they don't actually deliver when it matters.

> The probe exposes how personal distrust led the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, to avoid communicating with the destroyer’s electronic nerve center — the combat information center, or CIC — while the Fitzgerald tried to cross a shipping superhighway.

I was shocked to read above. You don't personally trust someone or people in CIC so you just don't communicate with CIC when you are crossing the most congested patch of ocean on the planet?

What is this? High school??

Los Angeles area had very advanced light railway system including Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric Railway Company up until 1960s.

Check the map of Pacific Electric Railway Company, and you can see a railway running on the beach from Hermosa Beach up to Santa Monica. The famous Venice Beach Bike Path was originally what the Pacific Electric Railway Company rail used to be. Can you imagine light rails ON the beach in SoCal?

All the rails were torn up after lobbying by oil/tire companies. :(

> You are limited by who you are. By your appearance, mannerisms, speech patterns. Your clothing, body language, grooming and hygiene. Your ingrained habits of action, speech and thought. Your age - foolish excitable youth or cramped, ossified old age. Your network and resume. Some of this can be improved, some can't.

I am fascinated that someone has above attributes lined up in a way so that they can drive around in $100,000 cars, drop $10,000 for a family vacation without having to save for years, and live in a house that is literally a movie set.

And you have the opposite like poor and homeless.

Isn't life ... weird?

Some profs just over ordered books. Some students bought books from other privately owned book stores across the street. Some students dropped out of class and hence did not buy books that were needed for 2nd half of the semester.

Above reasons contributed to quite a bit of the books not getting sold.

But yeah, I had to uncrate the dang books, and a few weeks later, crate the same books to ship back to publishers.

I bet I'm one of the very few of the student body who learned how to work with Pallet trucks.

That reminds me of the time I worked in the stock room of student book store in a major university on the west coast of US in mid 1990s. The stock room was in the basement of the school student bookstore. Before and beginning of each semester, we'd get crates of books, books that only college student taking a class would be required to buy.

The crazy thing was, once the semester was nearing the end, we'd pack up all the unsold books (some classes had many unsold books) and ship them back to the publisher, at a significant loss from what I remember.

The student union was run independently from the university as a non-profit and was running a big deficit. However, the office people upstairs had humongous 24 inch CRT monitors, ones that surely cost a pretty penny. In 1998, 17 inch CRT sold for nearly a thousand dollars. I just looked it up. But I digress.

Haha, that's interesting to hear.

So if Sears invested in Microsoft in 1980, Sears of today could've been like Yahoo, whose investment in Alibaba kept Yahoo afloat a few more years but ultimately continued down the downward spiral?

I gather that the few people at Sears who were aware of the investment invite from Bill Gates may not even be alive, considering it was 39 years ago.

Considering the tax loopholes and deals the super rich get, I actually have no problem with the small mom/pop shops doing what they can to get a break on the fees.

As someone noted above, the ratio of administrators (especially in district offices) and the actual teachers teaching kids has narrowed recently.

I remember reading an article of Michelle Rhee when she was head of Washington DC School district. At beginning of her term, she got lost in the district HQ and walked into a room where a lady was sitting in front of a computer. Rhee asked what her job was, and she couldn't answer. And soon enough, a purge of the HQ district office was implemented.

You can agree with her or not, but no doubt there is a lot of unnecessary people on payroll in places like school district HQ.

It is a very curious thing that administrators in school districts are held in higher regard than the teachers.

Programmers are held in higher regard because they do the actual work, if you know what I mean. Everyone else is in a support role.

And yet in school administrators are paid higher and have it easier, because they don't have to deal with parents directly.

Few years ago I visited a large apartment complex about 30 minutes south of Seoul in South Korea. The complex has Dozens of 30+ stories high apartment buildings. Assuming 30 stories high, 8 units per floor, and 25 buildings, we are talking about 6000 units. The unit I visited had 4 bedrooms. Despite such a high concentration of population, the complex itself felt like it was in the country side.

The key factor was underground parking (resident and visitor), with entrance to the underground parking connecting directly with the road. Within the complex are streets for cars with sidewalks like normal street, but strictly for emergency vehicles and moving trucks.

As I walked around the complex day and night, I couldn't believe the peace and calm I sensed as there were no cars moving around me. I kept looking around as I crossed the street as a reflex, but there were no cars to worry about.

I am no expert but me thinks more lives have been saved due to the much increased safety in navigation due to GPS system, than the lives lost due to JDAMs.

And not to mention the very existence of computer, CPU, internet and pretty much a lot of modern technology we take granted for were conceived, developed, refined with funding from various governments paying for them, because they involved in active/inactive wars, including US, UK, Russia etc.

Connected politically or not means squat if you build a structure that collapses killing hundreds of people. At least I hope that is the case in any place under rule of law. Of course I would hate to see any kind of building failure that causes mass casualty. But are the execs of Meriton aware of such possibility?

I am reminded of the Sampoong Department Store collapse in Seoul, Korea. This happened in 1995. This was a very high end department store from what I heard. I know acquaintances who know of a family that lost multiple family members.

The family that owned the building was one of those chae-bul family in S. Korea with multiple business interests. I believe in top 50 at the time or something like it. So yes they were politically connected. But because of the catastrophic failure of the building with mass casualty, the family's entire holding was liquidated to pay for compensation to the victims' families. And the owner/owner's son both served lengthy prison terms.

Edit: While reading up on Sampoong incident, I learned the owner wanted original construction firm to take shortcuts to reduce cost, but they refused. So the owner fired the firm and started HIS OWN construction firm to build the building. At least someone had a backbone, stuck to what was right, and lost a big job/contract, but was proved to be in the right. I bet someone at the original construction firm let out a huge sigh of relief later.

The entire modern economy seems to exist for, because of, and due to ads.

I don't think a lot of rich are into making more money to be happier. But rather to have more than the guy next to him. It's treated more like a game.

I think some rich people are not into making more money to be happirr but just to have more than the guy next to him.

I am genuinely surprised no public announcement of any kind has been made by any politician of NY yet about this. Maybe some have and I just don't know?

Or could it be that all NY politicians have been paid off by these entrepreneurs?

Your friend will nod in agreement, but nothing will change. He went into the firm and is staying on mostly likely knowing what is going on, because the pay is too good.